(Bloomberg) —
On a bright, clear May morning, I’m wandering the hilly wilderness of southern Illinois, two hours east of St. Louis. I follow my guide, Aaron Kleidon, as he weaves among towering birch, oak and hickory trees while trying to avoid the mud. He stops and crouches over a low-lying plant, a dark purplish-green clump of leaves that I would’ve disregarded as a weed. Kleidon, whose family has owned this remote acreage since he was a child, instantly recognizes it as perilla, an herb native to Asia. It’s invasive, yes, but to Kleidon it has its uses.
He pinches off a few sprigs and hands one to me, then another to his fellow forager, Marika Josephson. Following their lead, I grind mine between my dirt-stained fingers and bring it to my nose, breathing in aromas of licorice and lemon. Kleidon balls up a leaf and slips it into his mouth; I do the same, getting the taste of sharp mint and hints of basil. Silently the three of us ponder the same question: What would this taste like in a beer?
Josephson and Kleidon have a much better sense than I. They’re co-owners of Scratch Brewing Co., a pioneer in the world of forage brewing—that is, making beer with ingredients found in the wild, including roots, fruits, vines and even tree bark, which they supplement with elements from their own garden patch.
Most breweries know exactly what they’re going to make on a given day and have the precise type and quantity of hops, malt and adjunct ingredients (such as honey or rice for a lager) on hand to fit the bill. At Scratch, opened in 2013, every brew day is an adventure. Josephson and Kleidon might have a general style in mind; they may even have the grain mashed in water to begin the process. But then they grab a 5-gallon bucket and head to the woods to see what nature provides.
Breweries that share this ground-to-glass approach include North Carolina’s Fonta Flora, Vermont’s Wunderkammer and Wolves & People in Oregon. The offerings include elderflower saisons, fennel stouts, oyster mushroom Berliner Weisse, and wild carrot and nettle farmhouse ales.
“To create beer with a sense of place and purpose” is the reason Todd Boera, co-founder of Fonta Flora, gives for incorporating foraged beer in his portfolio since opening 12 years ago. “And part of that purpose extends outside the world of agriculture.”
This ethos reflects a general culinary world push for surprising, ultra-locally sourced ingredients. Everyone from chefs in Michelin-starred restaurants to home cooks are looking to their backyard to add terroir, texture and excitement to their dishes. Using foraged ingredients in beer makes even more of a statement because European-style brewing traditionally sources hops and malted grains from industrial farms far away.
It doesn’t hurt that forage brewing also dovetails neatly with the growing call for sustainability in craft beer, in both an ecological and a business sense. After years of rapid growth, the industry has started to contract: Craft brewery closures are outpacing openings for the first time since 2005, and smaller producers are turning away from broad third-party distribution to emphasize local and direct-to-consumer sales, which help foster stronger brand connections and repeat buyers. Scratch, for example, says it distributes only 20% of its beer off premises, and that’s mostly to entice people to come to the brewery.
Another benefit: “I haven’t thought once about tariffs,” Josephson says. “Everything we do is right here.”
That doesn’t mean the practice is without challenges. First, while the found ingredients are grown essentially for “free,” foraging is hard, specialized work: It takes expertise to identify each plant, avoid those that are toxic, understand when something is edible and how the flavors evolve through the season, and know the window to grab provisions before rival foragers such as birds, deer, squirrels and raccoons get the prime pickings. At Scratch, typically about two buckets of plant material make it into a 7-barrel batch—though, if a particular brew is using a bunch of different plants, there might be just one sprig of a certain herb added to the mix.
Fonta Flora’s Boera says gathering dandelions to add bitterness and a grassy, orange-zest-like aroma to its Lion’s Tooth IPA requires paying multiple people for multiple hours spent harvesting the flowers. “It can definitely be more expensive than brewing a regular beer,” he says. Gatherers are also at the mercy of weather and chance when it comes to the quantity and quality of their harvest.
Brewers willing to take this kind of risk view the unpredictability as a virtue—a challenge for their creativity. “We aren’t pigeonholed into having to make one beer every year,” Kleidon says, holding a just‑plucked fungus. “We haven’t had black trumpet mushrooms for a beer in several years, so we just brew something else. If we have it, great!”
Adjunct ingredients are easy to work into any point of the brewing process. While corn or wheat for a lager or hefeweizen is typically added before or during initial mashing, and maple syrup for a stout or fruit concentrates for a sour come in after fermentation or even during a secondary fermentation, foraged things such as wild fennel, strawberries, bee balm and mustard greens can be thrown in at pretty much any time in the process, often alongside the hops during the midway boiling stage.
The permutations are endless. Scratch brews a Single Tree series using leaves, nuts and bark from a solitary hickory or birch (or a couple of the same type as needed). Once a year the brewers go to the other extreme, gathering as many varied ingredients as possible. They’ll bring them all back to the brewhouse and throw them in the boil to create a beer they name by the number of ingredients (last year it was “49”; the year before it was “131”). When they find a new ingredient, they’ll brew it in a tea to try different combinations before committing it to a new beer recipe.
Fonta Flora took the notoriously invasive kudzu, which has ravaged ecosystems in the American South, and used its flowers to add a grape soda aroma to Kudzilla, a dry-hopped West Coast-style IPA. In the Northeast Kingdom region of Vermont, Wunderkammer (German for “cabinet of curiosities”) has a series of beers called Gathered, which are devoted to ingredients found in one area on a single day.
“It could be raspberry leaf and coltsfoot or sumac, goldenrod and wild apples—I want it to be a Polaroid snapshot of that specific day,” says founder and brewer Vasilios Gletsos.
But as with a Polaroid, not everyone loves what develops. Foraged products may challenge lager lovers and the traditional hopheads who drive craft beer’s IPA obsession. In fact, Scratch sometimes avoids using hops altogether, making what’s technically not a beer but a gruit.
“Does adding the dandelion make an IPA sell better than not? For sure, no,” Boera says. “But I feel like these are the things that continue to keep stuff interesting and inspiring in a craft beer world that can feel stale and stagnant.” And sometimes you get a bona fide hit, like Pine Zips, an American IPA made with the needles and wood of gathered white pine trees. “We didn’t know when we first made it, but it’s become a pretty big powerhouse for us, with fans looking forward to its release each October to kick off our winter seasonals,” Boera says.
But mass growth isn’t really the point. Immersing beer drinkers in the rhythms of the environment is, tying enjoyment to time and place. And for its efforts, Scratch has collected four James Beard nominations (the Oscars of food and drink) in both product and service categories. “We believe it’s important that people feel connected to the land that it’s coming from,” Josephson says.
Drinking a beer made from nature, surrounded by nature, in other words, just tastes better.
Sitting in Scratch’s rustic taproom after our time foraging in the woods, I agree. As I sip a chanterelle bière de garde, the earthiness and an apricoty hint provided by mushrooms picked just a few feet away is more profound. I can walk out the door and hear the wind blow through the leaves of the wild cherry trees, the bark of which provides sweetness, smokiness and slight bitterness to my black cherry sour wild ale. I can smell the pungent fragrance of flowers and herbs that will go into future Scratch beers and experience the bounty, hidden in plain sight, of this secluded corner of the Earth.
To contact the author of this story:
Tony Rehagen in New York at rehagentony@gmail.com
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